


Flying and Fallling

by fireheart93



Series: Life's a Circus (so why not join one) [3]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-26
Updated: 2014-04-26
Packaged: 2018-01-20 22:09:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1527455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fireheart93/pseuds/fireheart93
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carolina is the best aerial acrobat anyone in the Circus has seen.</p><p>Well, except for her mother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flying and Fallling

Carolina is the best aerial acrobat anyone in the Circus has seen.

Well, except for her mother.

Alison had flown like a swallow, swift and sure, swooping through the air as if she had wings. Carolina was more like an eagle; equally certain but slower, with more weight and purpose. She flew like a bird of prey, dangerous but beautiful. 

She was never afraid of falling. 

Carolina doesn’t really remember the day her mother died. She had dropped off her and her brother in the nursery tent on her way to rehearsal. She hadn’t said goodbye, but then she never did.

Alison never did like goodbyes.

Hours passed but that was okay, Carolina was used to her mother being away for hours, occasionally even days. She played with the Dakota twins (though they wouldn’t become the Dakota’s for many years yet) and rough-housed with her little brother Leo (who wasn’t so little any more) and laughed. The sun set as they ate dinner and still she didn’t worry. 

And then her father arrived.

Her father never came to the nursery tent. It’s not that he didn’t love his children, he just wasn’t sure what to do with them, how to talk to them. Alison was always better at that, so he didn’t have to be. He called Carolina and Leo over to him, knelt down in front of them, and told them their mother wasn’t coming back. She had fallen trying to help an acrobat who had become tangled in a wire. She wasn’t there anymore.

Carolina doesn’t remember crying. 

It’s hard for her, even now, to think of her mother as dead. She catches herself thinking that her mother isn’t here right now, but when she gets back she’ll tell her about her ideas for a new routine, about Church’s new recruit for blue team, about that man she met in the bar last night, the man with the lighter but no cigarettes. She carries these things under her tongue, ready to tell her mother when she comes back. But she never does.

Carolina has never been afraid of falling.  
If she fell her mother would catch her.

She has grown up in her mother’s shadow, good but never as good, competing with a memory. But she doesn’t hate her mother, how can she when it was Alison who first taught her to fly, only a few feet off the ground, standing ready to catch her. So instead she hates herself, when she makes mistakes, when she’s not quite good enough. When her brother refuses to follow in their father’s footsteps and take an interest in the Circus administration she volunteers to help, learning to fly between front and back of house as well as she flies between trapezes. But her father barely notices, still angry about Church, still grieving for Alison. Carolina begins to feel invisible, even when performing; the crowd doesn’t see her, just the glitter of her costume as she flies through the air. Church is too wrapped up in his own life to worry about her, anyway she’s the big sister, worrying is her job. So she carries on, not quite invisible, making her presence felt in orders and performances, but feeling less present as the days go by.

She is the Director’s daughter.  
She is the daughter of Alison, who fell.  
She was named for a state, and so cannot leave her name behind as the others have done.

Carolina is not afraid of falling.  
Not until the she walks into a bar and meets the man with a lighter but no cigarettes.   
She very quickly learns to be afraid of falling for him.


End file.
